Love Sometimes Demands Toughness: A Letter to an Atheist

I took up for you about the name-calling, but certainly there are weightier issues at hand, as our friend indicated. Let me try to illustrate.

On numerous occasions, you have arrogantly challenged me to debate. I either didn’t respond or I told you that I wasn’t interested. However, I never really explained why I wasn’t interested. It was for fear of hurting your feelings. But if we care, sometimes feelings must be hurt in hope of more important gains. It’s these gains that I seek – a real meeting of minds based upon your embrace of Christ.

Now, your heart and mind are quite hardened. You speak of relations with women as merely a matter of “getting laid,” without the slightest appreciation of what they truly need (despite their own blindness – being cut off from their own humanity) – a true love, cherishing, nurturing and adoration of who they are as people, not just their bodies. As it now stands, you are merely using another human for your own selfish gratification!

This hardness manifests itself in another way between us. You can’t hear what I say. You are so locked in to your own worldview (as you claim that I am) that you consistently misconstrue what I say. For example, you are either unable or unwilling  (perhaps both) to grasp the fact that it is disingenuous of you to insist that I prove God, when you have completely failed to prove that even you exist.

This is frustrating and totally unsatisfying – no give-and-take at all! It is like talking to a five-year-old who refuses to hear what you say. At least with a five-year-old, you can spank some sense into them. Meanwhile, you call me a coward because I won’t debate you, one-on-one. Frankly, it’s a waste of my time.

Jesus talked about those who hate the light and therefore reject it entirely (John 3:19-21). This describes the way I had been and also you. Now, you can avoid the light – the evidence! However, there will come a time when the light of Christ will be so intense and undeniable, that you will flee it in favor of a place of eternal torment. If you hate the Light here, you will definitely hate it there.

I say this to you, not to put you down (without the light of Christ, we all share the same boat of denial), but to shake you out of your rut and to see what is manifestly obvious to the rest of the world. I pray that someday, we might be brothers and only laugh together about these present disagreements.